We’re excited to announce the finalists for our GameLab Indie Developer Competition! We were blown away by the quality, creativity and enthusiasm of the teams that applied, and they made it very hard for us to make a decision. While we would have loved to invite everyone to GameLab, we could only choose six teams to compete. 

The teams will be going head to head in front of a group of expert panelists in the mobile gaming field on June 26th at GameLab in Barcelona. Our all-star team of panelists includes Jussi Immonen of Rovio,  Jeroen Bouwman of Spil Games, Wilhelm Taht of PLGND, Horacio Martos of SocialPoint and Pepe Agell of Chartboost.

So without further ado, he finalists for GameLab Indie Developer Competition 2013 are:

Fosfore Studios - Pulsar Game

Wake Studios - Hazel Dazzle

Tom Zawadzski - Tiny Elementals

Headnought - Wood Chopper

Ninja Fever - It Came from Beta Minotauri

KnapKnock Games - Panzer Geekz

May the best game win!

We’re excited that the good folks at VentureBeat have named Chartboost one of the top 10 mobile advertising companies to watch! They’re looking to get feedback on the companies they named from actual users - like you - to help people understand the evolving mobile ecosystem.

Got a few minutes to spare? Fill out the VentureBeat survey and let others know how Chartboost can help their mobile gaming business!  Everyone who fills out the product survey will be given the results of the entire report for free.  

Thanks for helping spread the word about how Chartboost can help developers monetize!

Dear developers,

Due to great response to our Indie Developer Competition for GameLab in Barcelona, we’ve decided to extend the application deadline to this Thursday, June 13th! 

Get your applications in today for the chance to compete!

Interested in competing? Enter for your chance to join here!

Over the past month, Roy and I traveled to meet with developers throughout China and Singapore to learn more about the phenomenal growth in the mobile gaming industry there.   While developers continue to build titles for the international market, this year we also saw an increasing emphasis on the opportunity in the domestic China market.

The first two conferences we attended were GMGC (Global Mobile Game Conference) and GMIC (Global Mobile Internet Conference), both hosted in Beijing.

GMIC is one of the largest mobile industry events in Asia and drew a crowd of over 10,000 mobile industry professionals.   A hot topic of discussion was how to modify games to be successful in local markets, particularly China.  Most developers see the need to not only localize their games (e.g. language), but also “culturalize “ them by incorporating elements of Chinese folklore such as historical events and characters to create a much closer connection with the users.

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Here at Chartboost we eat, sleep, and breathe mobile games. What We’re Playing highlights five games that we’ve discovered recently that we want to share. 

Do you have a game that you think we should play? Feel free to give us a shout on Twitter @Chartboost!

Nate Barker — Evangelist

@kneyght

Playing Civilization Revolution by: 2k Games

BEHOLD, minions: in one breath I blow my glory across a continent! Barbarians fall in horror before my mighty armies. Cities rise from the mud under my watchful gaze. Nations tremble at the sound of my name! In “Civilization,” like no other game, I may seize the eternal chisel and etch my greatness into the void of time. Alright, I have no idea what that last bit means, but playing this game makes me feel all sorts of epic. Check it out for hours of “just one more turn,” multiplayer, and some brand new custom campaigns. 

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Dear developers,

We’re excited to announce that we’ll be hosting a mobile game developer competition at the Gamelab conference in Barcelona for the chance to attend the next Chartboost University in San Francisco!

Five teams will be selected to present a demo of their game and receive valuable feedback from a panel of industry experts from Rovio, SocialPoint and PLGND. The selected teams will be given free passes to Gamelab, which will be held June 26th-28th.  Submissions must be received by June 9th. Winners will be announced the week of June 10th. 

Interested in competing? Enter for your chance to join here!

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to participate in the annual Kontagent Konnect conference and speak on a panel called “The Art and Science of User Acquisition”.  One key topic was the importance of preparation and testing prior to launching your full campaign.  I summarized three of the main takeaways below.

First, make sure you have your tracking and analytics in place so you know the value of every user you acquire.  Don’t be shy about sharing your data with your partners either, it can really help improve performance.

Secondly, run campaigns in test markets first to be able to a/b test creatives, messaging, devices, gameplay and monetization before you go out to a broader audience.  However be prepared to spend a bit more to acquire a user in popular English speaking test markets such as Australia and Canada.  You can see this trend below using recent data from our network on CPI / CPCs by country on iOS.

Lastly, figure out which exact publisher sources are the best sources of traffic for YOU.  Every publisher varies dramatically by performance, CTR, Install Rate and quality/ARPU.   Your goal is to have a positive return on investment for each dollar you spend - if a publisher or traffic source isn’t delivering value turn them off!  For the most valuable traffic, fire up a direct deal campaign and work directly with the source.  This is the most effective way to drive more volume and scale from the games that resonate the most with your users.

Proper planning and testing can go a long way to making your launch a success.  Good luck!  

Christine

We’re very excited to be hosting a demo day on May 31st with European gaming accelerator, GameFounders here at Chartboost HQ in San Francisco! GameFounders has selected eight awesome indie developers who will be giving demos of their games at 4pm, followed by a happy hour with drinks and appetizers.

To learn more about the teams and hear a little about their process, check out their videos on GameFounder’s blog. They’ve been on the road, traveling first to London, and most recently to Sweden, and we’re very excited to be welcoming them to San Francisco. Want to join in the fun? We have limited capacity, so register for the event via EventBrite here before space runs out!

Dear Developers,

We are looking for teams interested in participating in a closed Beta program for our upcoming product to be released soon. Beta testers will have exclusive early access to our product, exclusive support from our product and engineering teams and contribute invaluable feedback to help shape our product. We will be selecting twenty-five (25) developers to test and provide feedback on our products.

If you meet the following criteria, please submit the form from the link below:

• Have a game (FREE or PAID) live in the iOS App Store
• Available for download in the US
• Integrate our Beta SDK and code into your selected title(s)
• Completed by June 3rd to be live in the iOS App Store by June 15th
• Ass Kicking Attitude to make things better

Beta Test Application Form

Thank you for your interest! - David

Chartboost is always trying to make our products better and easier to use for our developers. That’s why, after listening to your feedback, we’ve made some great improvements to our Campaign Overview page that we think you’re going to love! Improvements include:

• Filter by App: Developers with tons of campaigns can now filter by app in order to quickly and easily identify all campaigns associated with an app and which of those campaigns are performing well. 

• Advanced Filter Options: We’re now offering the option to filter by role (advertiser or publisher) and campaign type (cross promotion, direct deal, or network).  

• Beautiful new interface: We’ve updated the graphics to match our new App Overview page for consistently gorgeous design.

The Campaign Overview page allows you to easily compare performance metrics between campaigns to determine which are most successful over time.

Check out our website for more details and keep an eye out for more improvements to the dashboard coming soon! As always, you can contact us at feedback@chartboost.com for any suggestions or features you’d like to see us add in the future.